NGC 281, PacMan to its friends, is a nebula of ionized gases with emissions visible in the hydrogen (H II) and oxygen (O III) spectra, from which come the red-yellow and blue colours respectively.
Although PacMan is famous for being a hungry little creature, our nebula — about 9,200 light years away — hides a "small" open cluster, IC 1590, made of young massive stars that feed its bright flame.
The nickname, of course, comes from the band of dark dust that bites into one side and gives it the silhouette of the video-game character. The cluster was born from the cloud itself: its most massive stars emit the ultraviolet radiation that makes the hydrogen glow red. That same radiation, together with the stellar winds, is eroding the gas from within and widening the central cavity.
Scattered across the bright background are several Bok globules, dark compact knots of dust: the cocoons in which the region's next stars are forming.
The last photograph, an "art" version, was taken four years ago with only a DSLR and a home-made star tracker.
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